It was, sang the away supporters in the Maracana, just like watching Brazil. Although before that, obviously, it was just like watching England. You wouldn’t very easily get the two mixed up.

All the same, Roy Hodgson’s definitively un-Brazillish England team limped defiantly to the last peep of the 2012-13 season last night, snatching a most improbable 2-2 draw in Rio de Janeiro.

Two-all was, on reflection, an extraordinary result, since all the play in the first half indicated that a fair score was going to be something like Joga Bonito 6 Jog On Bonehead 0.

But England employed a form of rope-a-dope football: confusing and tiring the opposition by playing like absolute filth for an hour or so, before coming to life to slug the issue out in the last 30 minutes. Clever. And actually, taken as a whole, it was pretty entertaining.

Furthermore, I think you’ll agree with me that England did enough in the Maracana to suggest that they deserve to be at the 2014 World Cup.

I mean that not in the sense that they are unquestionably good enough to beat Moldova, Ukraine, Montenegro and Poland in their qualifying group and actually get to the damned thing. (We’re all hoping they are but, well, you know. Life isn’t straightforward, is it?)

No, when I say that England have what it takes to merit their place at the next World Cup I mean that on the evidence of last night they are still more than capable of struggling heroically and thrillingly to a draw with a major footballing nation.

This is obviously England’s main function at international tournaments and under Hodgson it is reassuring to know that they haven’t lost their feel for it.

Had last night’s game been the quarter-final of Brazil 2014, it would also have included a soul-sapping period of extra-time, a red card for somebody useful and a penalty shoot-out ending in … oh, come on, you know how those things end.

They didn’t go through with that malarkey — it was only a friendly, for goodness sake — but otherwise last night’s match was a perfect tune-up for an England tilt at the real thing in a year and week’s time. Roll on 2014!